Poland fails to sell off historic shipyards

The sale of two struggling Polish shipyards to Qatari investors has failed after the potential buyers declined to pay up within the time period agreed with the European Commission, Poland＇s treasury minister said Tuesday. Neither a private client with Qatar roots, identified by Polish authorities as Stichting Particulier Fonds Greenrights, nor the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), a state body, "transferred money by the foreseen deadline" of August 31, Treasury Minister Aleksander Grad told reporters in Warsaw.
"We admit that the sale of the assets belonging to the Gdynia and Szczecin shipyards has come to an end," the minister said.
Poland has asked the European Commission to agree to a new procedure for the sale of the Gdynia and Szczecin shipyards and expects to get a green light from the body, Grad said Monday. "These shipyards have already stopped working and are not producing ships any more. They have no impact on the maritime construction market," Grad said. The two Baltic Sea yards are facing bankruptcy, grim news for their 8,000 workers who have been in limbo for months.
Confusion had reigned over the sale of the yards, which have deep historical significance for Poles as the shipbuilding sector was the cradle of protests against the communist old order in the 1970s and 1980s.
In May, Warsaw announced they had been sold but refused to provide details. The following month, the treasury said the buyer was Qatari bank QInvest, but the latter said it was simply acting as an adviser in the deal.
Stichting Particulier Fonds Greenrights is based in Curacao, a Caribbean offshore tax haven run by the Netherlands. The initial deadline for the 364-million-zloty (87-million-euro, 123-million-dollar) payment was July 21. It was later pushed back to August 17 and then again to August 31 after the investors asked for more time in order to investigate claims of corruption among the Szczecin yard＇s previous management. Poland rejected the corruption allegations. In 2005, the European Commission, which polices competition rules in the 27-nation EU, launched a probe of Polish state aid for the yards and eventually ruled that it had been used illegally to keep them in business. Poland was then ordered to either sell or wind up the two yards.